DETAILED LIST OF BIRDS. 
243 
only taken six in three years. It is usually placed amongst 
the branches of the Hill Oak, where it has been polled and 
the thickly growing shoots afford a good cover^ but some- 
times it is on the top of a small slender sapling. The nest 
is a good-sized structure of sticks with a rather deep cup 
lined with dried roots^ in fact it is very much like the nest of 
Garrulus lanceolotus, only larger and much deeper. They 
generally lay four eggs, which differ much in colour and 
markings."" I think five is the full number, as no less than 
three nests were taken a few days ago at Kotegurh each 
containing this number. The eggs are of the ordinary Indian 
Magpie type, somewhat smaller than those of U. occipitalis, 
but larger than the average of eggs of either Dendrocitta 
rufa, or D. himalayana. Doubtless all kinds of varieties 
occur, as the eggs of this family are very variable, but I have 
only seen two types ; in the one the ground is a pale dingy 
yellowish stone-colour profusely streaked, blotched and 
mottled with a somewhat pale brown, more or less olivaceous 
in some eggs, the markings even in this type being generally 
densest towards the large end where they form an irregular 
mottled cap. In the other type the ground is a very pale 
greenish drab colour ; there is a dense confluent, raw-sienna 
coloured zone round the large end, and only a few spots and 
specks of the same colour scattered about the rest of the 
egg. All kinds of intermediate varieties occur. The tex- 
ture of the shell is fine and compact, and the eggs are 
mostly more or less glossy. They vary in length from 1*27 
to 1-45, and from 0*88 to 0*96, in breadth; but average 
about 1-32 by 0 9. \_A. O. H.] 
679. Fregilus graculus. Linn.. 
I am not prepared at present to separate the Himalayan 
and the European Chough. I have examined a vast number 
of the former, but only two of the latter, and I am therefore 
perhaps not in a position to speak authoritatively on the 
subject, but so far as my comparison has gone the birds seem 
identical ; this species is one which varies very greatly in 
size and length of bill according to sex and age. \_A. O. H.~\ 
The Chough was very common all the way from the 
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